As in many other industries, it is desirable in the printing industry to simplify the design of equipment used to ensure efficient operation and cost savings. One area where technological advances afford cost savings is in the design of the printing press and print registration equipment. Through enhancements to the print registration equipment, considerable savings have been achieved while reliably ensuring that each of the color-global change layers in a four color print process are printed in register with each other as they are sequentially applied to the print web, and minimizing the wastage in each print run. In some equipment, one or more arrays of optical sensors are deployed in one or more scanning heads overlying the print web to detect the print registration marks on the print web and a processor linked to the scanning heads monitors the signals from the sensors and determines when a sensor or group of sensors has sensed the passage of a print registration mark.
Although much improvement has been obtained in the operational efficiency and effectiveness of the print registration equipment, the hardware costs have not been as effectively addressed. It is, accordingly, desirable to provide for a more economical construction of print registration equipment while maintaining the high standards of accuracy and reliability that the print industry has come to expect and require. It is further desirable to provide for a more compact construction of print registration scanning head.